by Meryl Gordon
A few days after Andrée’s funeral, the family took their private railcar to Montana. Despite his grief, William Clark went ahead with a planned speech to the Society of Montana Pioneers. His Who’s Who entry listed many illustrious organizations, but this unheralded group was the one he really cared about, where he felt at home and appreciated by his peers who had tamed the wilderness.
Clark was not a man who expressed his grief in public, but he did confide in Byron Cooney, the editor of the Montana American, who had known Clark since 1888. “A bitter blow to him was the death of his daughter Andrée,” Cooney later wrote in the newspaper. “He liked to talk of her. He seemed to like to have someone to talk to about her. He emphasized her brilliancy and other admirable qualities… Every time he referred to her his eyes filled up with tears which he did not try to conceal. He was also very devoted to his daughter Huguette…”
That fall, William Clark and Anna decided to keep Huguette with them and stay away from New York for a few extra weeks. From Butte, the family went to Long Beach, California, where they stayed at a beachfront resort, the Virginia Hotel. “Mrs. Clark and the little girl are in excellent health,” Clark wrote to Walter Bickford on October 10, noting that they were “now going directly through to New York as Huguette’s time of entrance to Miss Spence’s school is past due.”
Travel can offer a distraction from cares and woes, but there is always an inevitable reckoning upon coming home. The Clark mansion on Fifth Avenue was a different place after the death of Andrée. Andrée had been closer to her father, Huguette to her mother. Three people grieving side by side can be islands of isolation, as each mourns the loss separately. A surviving child is inevitably desperate to make things right at home and comfort her parents but cannot fill the void. Questions like Why her, why not me?—Should I feel lucky? guilty?—cast a shadow on a vulnerable adolescent.
Huguette dealt with her feelings by putting them on paper. She began keeping a diary on January 1, 1920, mostly in French, with the entries addressed to “Chere Petite Andrée” or “Chere Grande Soeur.” Since she could no longer confide in Andrée about her life, she described to her sister what she was up to every day, from practicing on her Stradivarius to buying a small statue to reluctantly attending the opera (“My, but Hugo is cranky!!!!!!!!!” she wrote in English). Huguette would often draw a heart under her name by way of sending Andrée her love. The diary lasted for only a few months, but it was a release. Modern-day grief therapists sometimes suggest that bereaved patients write a letter to their beloved; Huguette spontaneously figured out for herself a way to ease the pain. She could retreat to her room and privately convey her thoughts to her sister.
During their immediate period of mourning, the Clarks drew inward. When William Clark appeared at the Easter parade in April 1920, this was considered such a notable sighting that a syndicated picture and story went out across the country: “Ex-Copper King Senator Emerges,” noting that he is “seen little in public now” but had “promenaded Fifth Avenue with a silk hat and cane.”
Fearful for Huguette’s safety and their own, the Clarks became phobic about contracting illness. A visitor to their home would later describe an unusual phenomenon: the servants frequently wiped down the doorknobs to protect the family against any germs brought in by visitors. When Huguette went out with a governess, the staffer was instructed to make sure the heiress did not touch surfaces that might have germs.
When summer came around again, Anna took Huguette back to the Virginia Hotel in Long Beach, bringing along tutors so Huguette could continue her studies even during school vacation. Huguette usually took a few dolls with her when she traveled, comforting companions and reminders of home. Huguette wrote her father sweet, descriptive letters once a week, eager to please him by demonstrating how hard she was working on her lessons. At fourteen, she sounded young for her age, as if she had regressed from the trauma but was determined to sound cheerful. All she wanted now was to make her parents happy. She even made a little joke about going to work for her father.
Hotel Virginia, Long Beach, June 17, 1920
Dear Daddy,
… We are waiting for an earthquake because it is so warm today… I must say that I like the Montana climate better than this but I just love the beach, the waves when they come over you are so wonderful. This afternoon the water is so dirty and muddy. I am getting along fine with studies. I like Miss Keeling, my English teacher. She is very sweet, arithmetique is the hardest thing for me to learn the rest is easy, I am getting to like grammar better… I love history it is so interesting and to color maps. I am learning Spanish verbs which I find quite hard. I just learned a Spanish poem.
A week later, she wrote to her father again, stressing that she was practicing the violin so she could perform for him.
Hotel Virginia, Long Beach, July 24, 1920
Dear Daddy,
This morning I have no lessons because it is Saturday and as I am quite lazy I slept until nine o clock. At half past eleven I am going in swimming. I am learning how to float but when I use my arms I forget to move my feet and so it doesn’t carry me very far. I am also learning the overarm stroke, which is even harder than floating.
I am learning a pretty piece on my violin and I am sure you will like it, it has lovely notes on it, but I am getting along pretty well with it. I think I will know it all when you will be back… I am also learning two pages of concertos. Tonight mother is going to Los Angeles to study the stars through the telescope.
I know I am getting alone fine in arithmetique and don’t despair of some day becoming your auditor. I find it easier because my teacher explains it so well to me. The last earthquake they had in Los Angeles, mother was in, she got an awful scare, and she thought it would be written in the paper in huge black letters and it wasn’t even mentioned. The canaries are fine and just now are singing.
With her blonde hair and fair skin, Huguette was in danger from too much sun, but she was so in love with the beach that she paid no attention to that scorched sensation, as she admitted to her father in her next letter.
July 30, 1920
Dear Daddy,
Thank you so much for the check you sent me and also your typewritten letter and the paper about Columbia garden, it is nice of you to write to me so often. I am sure that you are fine and I wish you were with us. We are having so much fun. Yesterday I had my violin lesson and the rest of my studies I had done there the day before and afterwards we all went on the beach, after swimming we had a picnic on the sand. And we stayed there all day getting sunburned.
Mother has a big police dog he is lovely and we have lots of fun with him. This afternoon I am going to Los Angeles because my brace is loose on one side and so I must go to a dentist. Sometime next week we are all going to Santa Barbara. I must go in to lunch because mother is waiting for me. I send you lots of kisses and love and mother also, your daughter Huguette
Now that a year had passed since Andrée’s death, her parents wanted to establish a suitable memorial. Since she had been enamored of the Girl Scouts, William Clark purchased 135 acres in Briarcliff Manor, about 25 miles from Manhattan, and gave it to the Girl Scouts to create Camp Andrée Clark. He brought Huguette to a ceremony in November 1920 to announce the gift, a scene captured by a photographer. Nearly as tall as her five-foot-seven father, Huguette stands by his side with perfect posture and her head held high, her blonde shoulder-length curls peeking out beneath a fashionable hat. She looked on stoically as her father read out loud portions of Andrée’s diary.
Anna had been very involved in the project, visiting often to comment on the construction of the cabins and kitchen. But rather than join her husband and daughter at the dedication, Anna had gone to the one place where she could find peace, Paris. After more than a year of living with her grief and regrets, she needed time away from the gloomy Fifth Avenue mansion. Anna told her husband that she was only planning to be abroad for a few weeks. But once in Paris, she stretched out her stay and arr
anged to deliberately miss spending Christmas with her husband and Huguette. Clark mentioned Anna’s change of plans to his lawyer, but he expressed relief that her spirits seemed to be improving. Anna returned in time for New Year’s and spent a few months in Manhattan but then left abruptly for Los Angeles to see her brother, Arthur, who was in poor health.
For Huguette, being left behind on Fifth Avenue, either with her workaholic father or with just the servants, was a way of life. It was lonely, but she was used to keeping herself occupied. She had friends at the Spence School and played violin in what she called “Mrs. Harriman’s orchestra.” The American Orchestral Society, created by the railroad titan’s wife, Mary Harriman, showcased upper-class young talent.
Assigned to write a paper for Spence on “Happy Moments,” Huguette chose to describe self-sufficient activities:
When one has a thrilling book and in the middle of an exciting story, what could be more delightful on rainy days. I love to read good books.
Another happy moment is when I go swimming. We have a swimming pool at home so it makes it very easy for me to go in swimming before school. What fun it is to glide through the water, dive and plunge.
Another thing I like to do is travel, what fun it is to pack one’s things and think that in a few days one will be away from horrid Old or should I say New, New York.
I like to travel on the train just as much as I do on the boat. How delightful it is to fly, almost, over fields and woods and to think that the summer vacation has started.
Most teenagers tire of childhood toys, but Huguette still cherished her French comic books and her growing doll collection, housed in a separate room at the mansion. She treated her dolls with care. These porcelain lifelike objects reminded her of a more innocent time, when her existence was not so solitary.
Chapter Eight
Beginnings and Endings
Sunshine and blue skies, palm trees and white beaches, hot days and cooler nights. The summer of 1921 was magical for Huguette Clark, a perfect few months for a fifteen-year-old who was coming of age and discovering that she was attractive. Anna took her to Honolulu to stay at the most luxurious resort on the island, the Moana Hotel, a beachfront property where the Prince of Wales had tarried a year earlier. Jaquita and Margarita Vidal came along as their companions.
Huguette looks radiant in family photos as she and Jaquita frolic in the sand, hugging each other in a pose that borders on sapphic. The Vidal sisters dressed Huguette in imaginative costumes. In one photo, she has gone native in a grass hula skirt with her blonde hair wildly flying; in another, she is grown-up and alluring in a black lace flamenco-style dress, wearing dangling earrings with her hair pinned fashionably up, striking an insouciant pose. The senator was planning to join his family partly through their holiday, and Huguette, looking forward to his arrival, wrote to him about beach life.
July 12, 1921
Dear Daddy,
… It is so wonderful here, I will just hate to leave it… The other evening we visited the Duke Kahanamoku, the whole family was there, they are charming people. The Duke Kahanamoku is the champion swimmer of the world. He has about six brothers and three sisters. One of the brothers called Sam plays the guitar beautifully. Every evening after supper he plays out on the pier. The other night [illegible] and I were serenaded. It is thrilling. I practice my violin every day. And I am taking lessons on the Yukelele but I like the guitar much better and would like to take lessons on it. Mother is taking lessons and she plays well… Well, I will now say goodbye and hope you are fine.
The six-foot-three Duke Kahanamoku, the 1912 and 1920 Olympic swimming champion and the inventor of modern surfing, towers over Huguette in photographs, giving her an indulgent smile as she gazes at him with total adoration. Duke posed in the ocean with Huguette and a surfboard, and with her and her parents at the Outrigger Club, leaning against a canoe.
The Olympian was a regular at the Moana Hotel, earning extra cash by entertaining the guests, such as the Prince of Wales, whom he’d taught to surf a year earlier. Kahanamoku would paddle out on a long boat a half mile offshore with his pupils, and then show them how to catch a wave back to the beach.
Anna Clark became so fond of the Hawaiian beach boys who entertained the family that she promised to pay for the education of Duke’s younger brother, Sam Kahanamoku, as well as two of his friends, Pau Keolahu, who wanted to study the violin, and Joe Bisho, who had been accepted at a St. Louis college but could not afford the tuition. The Clarks sailed with Sam and the rest of their entourage to San Francisco and checked into the St. Francis Hotel. But the Belmont Military Academy, the school they had chosen for Sam, refused to accept the dark-skinned Hawaiian, claiming there were no slots available.
The aging senator stayed out of the resulting furor. “The affair is entirely in Mrs. Clark’s hands,” the copper mogul told the San Francisco Call from his hotel room. “I do not think any attempt will be made to put the boy into another school. We will probably send him back to Hawaii. Mrs. Clark is the only one who can say anything definitely about the case and she has gone to a moving picture show for the evening.” Sam Kahanamoku told the San Francisco Chronicle that Mrs. Clark “decided I had better start back… but I pleaded with her and she said I might remain for two weeks before returning. She is very gracious and kind.”
Anna would later tell friends that she bought Sam Kahanamoku new clothes and a car as a consolation prize. Returning to the beaches of Hawaii worked out for him: Sam won a bronze swimming medal in the 100-meter sprint at the 1924 Olympics swim meet, while his brother Duke took the silver and Johnny Weissmuller won the gold. The Hawaiian surfing brothers continued to enrapture wealthy tourists, and Duke would later become the paramour of tobacco heiress Doris Duke.
The senator’s failure to get Sam Kahanamoku into Belmont Military Academy was the least of his worries. Two of Clark’s older children were enmeshed in scandals, one hushed up for years and the other about to become embarrassingly public. His namesake, William Clark Jr., twice widowed with a teenage son (Tertius), was now pursuing young men in Los Angeles, and discretion was not his strong point. His older brother, Charles, had written Will Jr. a pained letter in 1920 urging him to break off a relationship with Harrison Post, a San Francisco store clerk.
“Post bears the reputation of being a degenerate of the Oscar Wilde type,” Charles Clark wrote to his brother. “When Maizie [their older sister, Mary] was visiting you she received two anonymous letters on the subject, which she destroyed… You can’t afford to have your name tainted and in justice to yourself, the boy, your sisters and father.” Ignoring his older brother’s advice, Will Jr. put Post on his payroll and built him a house across the street from his own mansion in Los Angeles. But Junior’s love life remained private for now.
The talk of the town in Manhattan in the spring of 1922 was the divorce of William Clark’s oldest daughter, Mary. The convent-school-educated Mary had become known for her romantic misadventures. In the midst of her first divorce, she had been sued for alienation of affection by the wife of a male friend. Now Mary was divorcing her second husband, lawyer Charles Kling, and the details were ugly. In an effort to keep the divorce out of the newspapers, she had filed the legal papers in outlying Rockland County, but the press discovered the story. It was a titillating tale: Mary insisted in court papers that Charles Kling had repeatedly committed adultery. But even though she claimed to be the injured party, she ended up paying her husband a $580,000 settlement.
William Clark was pained by his oldest daughter’s multiple trips to the altar, but what really worried him was the fate of his youngest and most naïve heir, Huguette. Realistic about his own age, Clark, then eighty-three, did not know if he would be alive when suitors came to call. To protect Huguette, he began to repeatedly tell her that she needed to be wary of the motives of men and even potential female friends. Huguette would later repeat her father’s instructions to her closest friend, Suzanne Pierre, who passed on the stories to
her granddaughter, Kati Despretz Cruz. “Her father always said to her, ‘No one will really love you, you have to be careful. No one will love you for who you are. They will love you for your money,’ ” recounted Cruz. William Clark’s understandable fatherly concerns were crippling to an insecure young girl.
Huguette was going through the giggly teenage phase of longing for a boyfriend. She entertained a group of girlfriends at the society restaurant Sherry’s, just a month before her sixteenth birthday. Huguette was celebrating early because her parents had booked passage for the three of them on a steamer to Europe, with plans to see the Passion Play at Oberammergau and visit France and Italy. What Huguette remembered from this trip was an awakening sense of the possibilities of her future. Nearly eighty years later, at Christmas 2001, she wrote a revealing note to Sheila Lodge, the former mayor of Santa Barbara. After thanking Lodge for sending an account of her recent travels, Huguette added, “The trip that you made to beautiful Venice reminded me of the one I made at the age of sweet sixteen. I greatly enjoyed the gondolas and the singing of the gondoliers. It was all so very romantic.”